16 March 2005
$5 million rollout of successful maths project into secondary schools
This significant new funding will build on success in primary schools into our secondary classrooms
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About 1200 secondary school mathematics teachers across New Zealand will benefit from a $5.2million initiative announced
today by Associate Education Minister David Benson-Pope.
Since 2000, the Numeracy Development Project has lifted the skills of 14,000 primary and intermediate teachers. Mr
Benson-Pope today announced a 50 per cent increase in funding for this programme to allow it to be extended into
secondary schools.
Spending on teacher professional development in mathematics will rise from $10.8million to just over $16million over the
next four years. This will enable over 100 'expert' secondary mathematics teachers to work with 1200 of their colleagues
to lift secondary school achievement levels.
"We've had impressive success to date with up to 350,000 primary and intermediate students making gains in their maths
learning because of better teaching", said David Benson-Pope. "This project will support teachers to improve their
practice, especially at Years 9 and 10."
Mr Benson-Pope says that internationally our 15-year-olds as a group are performing well at maths - being fourth in the
OECD for numeracy skills. However, there remained groups of students who needed more help.
"We know from student results that too many students are not achieving as well as we would like in algebra and we could
do better in number concepts," said Mr Benson-Pope. "Likewise, we can improve in areas of measurement, geometry and
statistics."
Findings from a pilot confirmed the impact of the Numeracy Development Project on secondary students' overall
achievement in mathematics. In particular, students from schools involved in the project performed significantly better
in algebraic thinking than students from schools who had not taken part.
"The majority of teachers who will be in our classrooms over the next generation are already in schools," said Mr
Benson-Pope. "We know that what teachers know and do are the biggest influences on student learning and achievement. The
numeracy project has been successful in years 1 to 8. This significant new funding will build on that success in our
secondary classrooms."
ENDS